She found Lord Robert alone in the Morning Hall above the kitchens, pushing a wooden spoon listlessly through a big bowl of porridge and honey. “I wanted eggs,” he complained when he saw her. “I wanted three eggs boiled soft, and some back bacon.”
They had no eggs, no more than they had bacon. The Eyrie’s granaries held sufficient oats and corn and barley to feed them for a year, but they depended on a bastard girl named Mya Stone to bring fresh foodstuffs up from the valley floor. With the Lords Declarant encamped at the foot of the mountain there was no way for Mya to get through. Lord Belmore, first of the six to reach the Gates, had sent a raven to tell Littlefinger that no more food would go up to the Eyrie until he sent Lord Robert down. It was not quite a siege, not as yet, but it was the next best thing.
“You can have eggs when Mya comes, as many as you like,” Alayne promised the little lordling. “She’ll bring eggs and butter and melons, all sorts of tasty things.”
The boy was unappeased. “I wanted eggs today. ”
“Sweetrobin, there are no eggs, you know that. Please, eat your porridge, it’s very nice.” She ate a spoonful of her own.
Robert pushed his spoon across the bowl and back, but never brought it to his lips. “I am not hungry,” he decided. “I want to go back to bed. I never slept last night. I heard singing. Maester Colemon gave me dreamwine but I could still hear it.”
Alayne put down her spoon. “If there had been singing, I should have heard it too. You had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“No, it wasn’t a dream.” Tears filled his eyes. “Marillion was singing again. Your father says he’s dead, but he isn’t. ”
“He is.” It frightened her to hear him talk like this. Bad enough that he is small and sickly, what if he is mad as well? “Sweetrobin, he is. Marillion loved your lady mother too much and could not live with what he’d done to her, so he walked into the sky.” Alayne had not seen the body, no more than Robert had, but she did not doubt the fact of the singer’s death. “He’s gone, truly.”
“But I hear him every night. Even when I close the shutters and put a pillow on my head. Your father should have cut his tongue out. I told him to, but he wouldn’t.”
He needed a tongue to confess. “Be a good boy and eat your porridge,” Alayne pleaded. “Please? For me?”
“I don’t want porridge.” Robert flung his spoon across the hall. It bounced off a hanging tapestry, and left a smear of porridge upon a white silk moon. “The lord wants eggs! ”
“The lord shall eat porridge and be thankful for it,” said Petyr’s voice, behind them.
Alayne turned, and saw him in the doorway arch with Maester Colemon at his side. “You should heed the Lord Protector, my lord,” the maester said. “Your lord’s bannermen are coming up the mountain to pay you homage, so you will need all your strength.”
Robert rubbed at his left eye with a knuckle. “Send them away. I don’t want them. If they come, I’ll make them fly.”
“You tempt me sorely, my lord, but I fear I promised them safe conduct,” said Petyr. “In any case, it is too late to turn them back. By now they may have climbed as far as Stone.”
“Why won’t they leave us be?” wailed Alayne. “We never did them any harm. What do they want of us?”
“Just Lord Robert. Him, and the Vale.” Petyr smiled. “There will be eight of them. Lord Nestor is showing them up, and they have Lyn Corbray with them. Ser Lyn is not the sort of man to stay away when blood is in the offing.”
His words did little to soothe her fears. Lyn Corbray had slain almost as many men in duels as he had in battle. He had won his spurs during Robert’s Rebellion, she knew, fighting first against Lord Jon Arryn at the gates of Gulltown, and later beneath his banners on the Trident, where he had cut down Prince Lewyn of Dorne, a white knight of the Kingsguard. Petyr said that Prince Lewyn had been sorely wounded by the time the tide of battle swept him to his final dance with Lady Forlorn, but added, “That’s not a point you’ll want to raise with Corbray, though. Those who do are soon given the chance to ask Martell himself the truth of it, down in the halls of hell.” If even half of what she had heard from Lord Robert’s guards was true, Lyn Corbray was more dangerous than all six of the Lords Declarant put together. “Why is he coming?” she asked. “I thought the Corbrays were for you.”
“Lord Lyonel Corbray is well disposed toward my rule,” said Petyr, “but his brother goes his own way. On the Trident, when their father fell wounded, it was Lyn who snatched up Lady Forlorn and slew the man who’d cut him down. Whilst Lyonel was carrying the old man back to the maesters in the rear, Lyn led his charge against the Dornishmen threatening Robert’s left, broke their lines to pieces, and slew Lewyn Martell. So when old Lord Corbray died, he bestowed the Lady upon his younger son. Lyonel got his lands, his title, his castle, and all his coin, yet still feels he was cheated of his birthright, whilst Ser Lyn. well, he loves Lyonel as much as he loves me. He wanted Lysa’s hand for himself.”
“I don’t like Ser Lyn,” Robert insisted. “I won’t have him here. You send him back down. I never said that he could come. Not here. The Eyrie is impreg nable, Mother said.”
“Your mother is dead, my lord. Until your sixteenth name day, I rule the Eyrie.” Petyr turned to the stoop-backed serving woman hovering near the kitchen steps. “Mela, fetch his lordship a new spoon. He wants to eat his porridge.”
“I do not! Let my porridge fly!” This time Robert flung the bowl, porridge and honey and all. Petyr Baelish ducked aside nimbly, but Maester Colemon was not so quick. The wooden bowl caught him square in the chest, and its contents exploded upward over his face and shoulders. He yelped in a most unmaesterlike fashion, while Alayne turned to soothe the little lordling, but too late. The fit was on him. A pitcher of milk went flying as his hand caught it, flailing. When he tried to rise he knocked his chair backwards and fell on top of it. One foot caught Alayne in the belly, so hard it knocked the wind from her. “Oh, gods be good,” she heard Petyr say, disgusted.
Globs of porridge dotted Maester Colemon’s face and hair as he knelt over his charge, murmuring soothing words. One gobbet crept slowly down his right cheek, like a lumpy grey-brown tear. It is not so bad a spell as the last one, Alayne thought, trying to be hopeful. By the time the shaking stopped, two guards in sky-blue cloaks and silvery mail shirts had come at Petyr’s summons. “Take him back to bed and leech him,” the Lord Protector said, and the taller guardsman scooped the boy up in his arms. I could carry him myself, Alayne thought. He is no heavier than a doll.
Colemon lingered a moment before following. “My lord, this parley might best be left for another day. His lordship’s spells have grown worse since Lady Lysa’s death. More frequent and more violent. I bleed the child as often as I dare, and mix him dreamwine and milk of the poppy to help him sleep, but. ”
“He sleeps twelve hours a day,” Petyr said. “I require him awake from time to time.”
The maester combed his fingers through his hair, dribbling globs of porridge on the floor. “Lady Lysa would give his lordship her breast whenever he grew overwrought. Archmaester Ebrose claims that mother’s milk has many heathful properties.”
“Is that your counsel, maester? That we find a wet nurse for the Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale? When shall we wean him, on his wedding day? That way he can move directly from his nurse’s nipples to his wife’s.” Lord Petyr’s laugh made it plain what he thought of that. “No, I think not. I suggest you find another way. The boy is fond of sweets, is he not?”